Ecuador’s not-so-pink tide: a Citizen’s Revolution against its citizens

The Citizen Revolution has strengthened
the State at the detriment of the public, and its authoritarian hand has
legitimized the political Right. Today, few dare identifying with the Left
anymore. Español

Ecuador President Rafael Correa was an icon of Latin America’s pink
tide. The self-proclaimed socialist was a fervent advocate of the Bolivarian
Revolution and a close ally to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

He ran a
government program called “the Citizen’s Revolution” (Revolución Ciudadana)
focused on social justice and development. But the Revolution had its eyes on
the oil and turned sour all too soon.

It was a promising start. Correa was elected in 2006, re-elected in
2009 after a Constitutional Reform, and elected a third time in 2013. His
self-made party Alianza Pais gained
strong electoral support, secured a majority in Congress and benefited from the
most profitable oil boom in Ecuador’s history.

But the pink tide was not as rosy as expected. Censorship boomed, labor rights were restricted, and social protest was criminalized.

But the pink tide was not as
rosy as expected. Censorship boomed, labor rights were restricted, and social
protest was criminalized.

An authoritarian pink tide

The Citizen Revolution was not media friendly. Correa attacked
journalists, took them to court, had them fired. Investigative journalists
faced million-dollars lawsuits for denouncing corruption, newspapers were sued
for their editorials, and cartoonists were taken to court for “inaccurate”
humor.

The authoritarian turn meant repression of any form of opposition to
the government. The 2008 repression of a small protest in Dayuma, Amazonia, was
a presage of the years to come.

Some of the most infamous cases include the Ten
of Luluncoto, ten university students jailed for over a year on fabricated
charges of sabotage for discussing the rights of nature (with nothing less than
a book by Che Guevara as evidence).

The Six of Cotopaxi was a group of
university professors and administrators jailed for defending academic
autonomy. At the Mejia public high school, in Quito, student demands were met
with a brutal police intervention with tanks and torture on school grounds.

The defense of territories and water rights was framed as terrorism.
The Shuar leader Pepe Acacho and Pedro Mashiant were sentenced to 12 years in
jail for “organized terrorism” after leading peaceful protests against the 2009
Water Law.

Carlos (Yaku) Pérez Guartambel was jailed for “altruistic” terrorism
for defending water rights against gold-mining in the highlands of Kimsakocha
in 2010. In 2014, the anti-mining activist Javier Ramirez was illegally
arrested, then sentenced to 10 months in jail on ambiguous charges of
rebellion, sabotage and terrorism for resisting a state-owned mining project in
Intag.

In 2013, Decree 16 further stifled civil society. It forbid
organizations engaging in “political activities” to receive any international
funding- a strategy to cut short the support to indigenous and environmental
organizations.

It forced all non-profit organizations to register with the
government and required all administrative acts to be supervised by a
government delegate. Decree 16 was used to dissolve organizations like the
Pachamama, an NGO with 15 years of advocacy work in Amazonia, and the historic
National Union of Educators, created in 1944.

Ecuador’s authoritarianism was possible because Correa took over of
the justice system. The Revolution tailored the judiciary to its needs by creating
the Judicial Council, a supposedly independent mechanism that was de facto
managed by Correa.

Starting in 2011, a process of “restructuring” the courts
fired judges, many accused of “inexcusable errors,” and arbitrarily appointed
new ones.

Correa’s party had a comfortable majority in Congress. He often
governed by decree, creating for instance the infamous National Secretariat of
Intelligence, SENAIN (2009-2108), an agency accused of espionage, surveillance
and persecution of political opponents, journalists, and activists.

Correa also
controlled Ecuador’s National Electoral Council (CNE), which was recurrently
accused of fraud, lack of transparency, and from blocking political opponents
from running in elections.

A Congressman from the
Indigenous party Pachakutik faced an order of arrest for “insulting” the
president (and spent a year into hiding), another was beaten to the ground as
she entered Congress, and Galo Lara was jailed without trial on fabricated
charges for denouncing corruption. General Gabela died in shady circumstances
after denouncing government corruption.

Broken socio-economic promises

Claims to justify Ecuador’s authoritarian turn with economic rights-
as if there was a trade-off between political and social rights- fell short and
the Citizen Revolution broke many of its socio-economic promises.

Correa won elections with the promise of industrialization, the Latin
American way out of underdevelopment and dependency on commodity exports, but
the transition from exporter of primary products to a knowledge economy never
happened.

Correa did revamp his own version of Import Substitution Industrialization
policies, mainly centered in a long list of tariff-protected items along with
another list of exemptions by 2009.

Industrial policy had become a list of
national champions that changed as often as the ministers in charge of the
different versions of the same policies. Much cherished industrial policy has
not progressed beyond wonderful power point presentations displayed in
impressive white elephants like the Yachay University.

The other central promise to the progressive agenda was that of a
welfare state. Latin America’s pervasive inequality is a testament to that
absence. Ecuadorian citizens were eager to vote for a progressive government
universalizing a system of public health and education for all, after so many
years of austerity and restrictive social spending.

The reasons were obvious:
it has an immediately equalizer effect both, in terms of quantity of people
covered –including and especially the middle class- and the quality of services
provided so, that all citizens have similar opportunities.

Even when
multicultural and affirmative action programs are taking into account, the
socialization and optimization of social safety nets is what actually sets
apart the most equitable countries on earth: Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Paradoxically, President Correa did not stir the country in that
direction. He followed in the footsteps of populist Latin American presidents
–conservative or progressive alike- that only increased spending on targeted
programs, without universalizing access or improving the quality of the system,
leveling the playing field for the impoverished ones without making them
clients.

Social expenditure was at 4.2% of the GDP by 2016, the amount had more
than double to 9.4% of the GDP, according to Ecuadorian System of Social
Indicators, SICSE. Nonetheless some progress was made.

Public expenditure in
education -as a percentage of GDP- went from 2.8% in 2006 to 3.9% in 2016.
Investment in public health grew at a lower rate but grew nonetheless, from
1.2% of the GDP in 2006 to 2.8% at the end of the decade. It was a remarkable
achievement in and of itself.

The oil boom allowed him to ramp up social expenditure steadfast,
especially the first five years of his mandate. Once the economic downturn set
in, most of the initial investment became idle and incapable of sustaining the
initial rate of provision.

However, the
amount and pace of social investment do not tell the whole story.
Significantly, investment was directed at building new infrastructure either
hospitals or new schools and impressive building for new public universities.

The central problem was that the long-awaited educational reform in the country
became another authoritarian exercise of power imposed from the top. National
experts on education were ignored and the national teachers’ union vanished
from policy-making.

Indigenous bilingual education was terminated, leaving thousands of children in rural Ecuador without local schools, and the indigenous university Amawta Wasi was closed for not fitting the standardization of the education reform.

Indigenous bilingual education was terminated, leaving
thousands of children in rural Ecuador without local schools, and the
indigenous university Amawta Wasi was closed for not fitting the standardization
of the education reform.

No Neoliberal government had dared to forfeit such
achievements from a historically oppressed minority as the supposedly
progressive Citizens’ revolution did.

The reforms touched every aspect of public and private education, from
sudden curriculum changes for secondary to drastic interventions in public and
private universities that failed the scorecard imposed by the government.

Astonishingly, Correa’s administration did the opposite of what everybody was at the very beginning: radically improved the quality of primary
education to make it compulsory and accessible for all, erasing the existent
radical disparities between education for the rich and middle-upper classes and
the rest.

Instead, the majority of resources went to finance tertiary education
as opposed to primary and secondary education, reversing the historical path
followed by most successful OECD countries.

In 1986, 46.7% of all public
investment in education went to primary school and only 17% to tertiary
education. By 2016, 23.2% was going to primary and 43.5% to tertiary education.

Labor rights did not fare much better. Labor unions did not gain
support under Correa’s Revolution; instead its leaders were attacked or
censured from discussing labor reforms. Trade union membership did not improve
over the decade either.

If anything, its capacity to bargain for better
salaries and working conditions deteriorated even within the state where
unionized bureaucrats were subjected to forced “resignations” in mass when
Correa’s administration decided that political appointees were preferred for
technical positions.

Poverty reduction did happen; it declined from 37.6% to 23.3%.
However, poverty declined even faster under neoliberalism between 2000 and 2006
from 64.4% to 37.6%.

The economy had significantly slowed down in the face of increasing instability creating by serious allegations of corruption, slandering of public resources while the national budget tripled in less than ten years.

Meanwhile, the economy had significantly slowed down in the face of
increasing instability creating by serious allegations of corruption,
slandering of public resources while the national budget tripled in less than
ten years.

Correa left the country in a recession trap, with suboptimal annual
rates of growth underperforming all the rest of fellow Latin American economies
with the exception of Venezuela and Haiti, according to ECLAC.

The colonial trap: extraction,
corruption, and dispossession

Like elsewhere in Latin America, Ecuador’s New Left invoked the end of
dependency and narratives of national sovereignty.

As such, one of Correa’s
first steps was to shut down the US military base in Manta, celebrating the
recovery of sovereignty. He detached the country from World Bank conditional
loans, declaring its representative in Ecuador persona no grata.

Yet
sovereignty claims were quickly sidelined when it came to licensing territories
to extractive industries or taking credit loans from China.

Since macroeconomic policies were not part of the equation, the
Revolution went for oil. Oil, a key asset of the Citizen Revolution, came to
represent over 90% of Ecuador’s exports. Oil profits between 2007 and 2013
represented more than 50 % of the total income generated in the country’s
entire history since drilling started in the 1970s.

The unprecedented oil boom led to unprecedented levels of corruption.
As he stepped into office, Correa bought the support of the military by giving
them control over the national oil company PetroEcuador. Then, oil was used to
get quick quash.

The Panama Papers revealed that Petroecuador obtained a
billion-dollar loan from PetroChina in exchange for 69.12 million barrels of
crude in 2009, delivering 2.88 million barrels per month at 7.25% interest.

It
was an international speculative game: Correa’s regime pre-sold oil reserves to
China in exchange for immediate access to credit; China re-sold the oil in
global markets for a higher price. In the process, Ecuador's government officials
made millions in “commissions” that ended up in fiscal paradises.

These oil deals tied Amazon oil for decades to come. The Yasuni
Reserve was licensed to oil drilling to pay back Chinese loans, compromising
one of the world most biodiverse hotspots that is territory of the Tagaeri and
Taromenanis, two Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

By giving barrels
of oil to China in loan payments instead of selling them on the open market,
Ecuador, which is on the US dollar system, grew desperate for fast cash. China
became Ecuador's largest creditor, providing at least eleven loans totaling
over $15 billion since 2010.

Ecuador was left with gargantuan debts to China under draconian
conditions. Much of today’s debt are anticipated sales of oil exports with high
interest rates; future oil exports are already compromised to China.

Many
infrastructure projects were Chinese loans were channeled under strict
conditions of “buying Chinese” with little or no room for actual opportunities
to boost national industry.

In addition, the overspending spree under the guise
of Chinese investment has negatively impacts any future industrial policy and
has lasting consequences for social programs and the real possibility of an
Ecuadorian welfare state.

The reliance on oil to secure fast cash expanded the extractive frontier without environmental standards or prior consultation of indigenous peoples, provoking many social conflicts.

Corruption scandals plagued most development projects

The reliance on oil to secure fast cash expanded the extractive
frontier without environmental standards or prior consultation of indigenous
peoples, provoking many social conflicts.

The goal was to drill Ecuador’s way
into development, and those who resisted were accused of being “beggars sitting
on gold” delaying the nation. This urge for natural resources accentuated
colonial dynamics of land dispossession.

During his decade in office, Correa
doubled the license to extractive industries, which passed from 6% to 12% of
national territory.

There was never prior consultation: ancestral territories
were licensed to multinational corporations, especially from China, without
respecting constitutional and international collective rights to inform and
consult Indigenous peoples.

The Mining Law was crucial in articulating land dispossession for the
sake of extractive development. The five strategic projects for gold and copper
mega-mining- three in the highlands and two in Amazonia- contaminated rivers
and fueled conflict.

Lawfare was key to protect foreign investments in
extractive industries, and criminalization was harsher against nature
defenders. The Water Law and the Land Law confirmed a massive land grab
orchestrated by the Citizen Revolution.

The first authorized the
commodification of water, enabling Nestlé to build its largest water-bottle
plant in all Latin America in the foothills of the Cotopaxi. The second opened
the land grab to foreign capital, permitted foreign capital to buy vast lands
for industrial monoculture.

These policies subjecting territories to foreign extractive industries
were accompanied by a racist rhetoric. In addition to using legal warfare,
President Correa treated Indigenous authorities as savages, caveman, violent,
terrorists, and retarded during his national broadcasts.

For most Indigenous
communities, the Revolution was not associated with their understandings of sumak kawsay (living well), but with
violent dispossession, further exclusion, and toxic contamination.

Conclusion

There is little to celebrate from Ecuador’s pinktide. A first
desolating conclusion is that the authoritarian turn has legitimized voices on
the political Right, which became defender of basic human rights gaining the
electoral support of various Indigenous leaders.

A second one is that the Left
has not achieved the inequality reduction it has claimed. Worst, it has
devastated the system of welfare and left the country economically broken. A
third one, is that the Left relied on extractive models of development that
accentuated colonial dynamics of dispossession.

The Citizen Revolution strengthened the state at the detriment of the
public, and its authoritarian hand is now considered the most repressive in the
country’s history. Today, Correa is facing trial for crimes of state, and
nobody dares identifying with the Left anymore.

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